"With, not for"

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This essay introduces a dissertation about school-based, collaborative action and 21st century literacies. Methodological and theoretical constraints have tended toward the use of collaboration and 21st century literacies as black boxes, obscure yet necessary components in classroom productivity, not yet including significant inquiry into the realization of the complex array of proficiencies and conceptual understandings that ostensibly position students for success in the as yet unknown industries of tomorrow. Such inquiry is not only important as a way of carrying forward social justice evaluations of the method, but also as a starting point for examining 21st century literacy mediated learning. This dissertation approaches opportunities for such inquiry in three ways: First, it explores a methodology for conducting research among students engaged in collaborative problem solving that can help teachers facilitate opportunities for purposive writing as a ways of encoding social learning for real social action. Second, using the methodology described in the first essay, it models ethnographic listening in a university service-learning course as a way of understanding 21st century literacies as a learning process mediated by both supervisory and nonsupervisory assistance. Third, this project includes an interview and observation-based study of one teacher’s learning about the teaching of writing in an institutional setting with multiple obligations and pressures. This introductory essay finally asks broad questions about the adaptation of schooling for various interconnected purposes of democracy, technological change, collaboration, and writing instruction.